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Whether you’re zipping around a cavernous soda warehouse in Limbo, or dashing across the bright, colorful landscape of a television program, DmC delivers one interesting level after another.

Admittedly, even with all the secrets you can find, I wish these magnificent levels were less linear, that the way forward wasn’t always quite so clearly telegraphed.

Striking A Balance Between Open-World And Corridors

I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between open-world and linear games lately.

Far Cry 3 illustrated the challenges of attaining this balance only too well.

At the time, I argued that the two didn’t mix particularly well in Far Cry 3, that all that openness slowed the game down too much, killed the tension, and hindered whatever impact the narrative may have otherwise had.

Looking back, I still think the most fun I had with Far Cry 3 was while taking out individual pirate outposts.

The task of conquest itself was direct, but as a player I could tinker with strategy to my heart’s content.

The act of capturing these little bases was straightforward enough, but you were never forced into a linear approach.

I would have liked to see more of this type of open-ended gameplay in DmC. Not necessarily open-world, but more open in terms of how each objective is carried out. There are a lot of great tools (okay, mostly weapons) at your disposal in the game. It would have been neat to see these come into play outside of combat more often.

There is so much good gameplay potential baked into each level of this game and yet it’s never quite realized, never quite taken to the heights it deserves.

Occupy Limbo

DmC’s story is, as I mentioned above, basically V for Vendetta with demons. And like that film, it’s a pretty juvenile broadside against capitalism. I suppose in both cases the obtuseness of the narrative is gilded over with exciting stuff like explosions or, in DmC’s case, the never-ending demon-slaying.

Arch-demon Mundus controls the world through Raptor News, his investment banking monopoly, and his mind-controlling soda pop.

All the trademark bogey men—investment bankers, Fox News, and consumerism—are served up on a platter, as if the game were designed with freshman lit students as the target audience, full of angst and half-baked intellectualism and just enough rebellion to be edgy.

While I admire the attempt to get a bit political and tell a more interesting story, it’s too predictable and too hollow, too full of cliche to really work.

This is a huge shame, because the set-pieces themselves are enormously effective. I can’t help but think that if the storytelling itself were less heavy-handed, the sets could tell a more profound and interesting story.

This is partly due to the thematic choices, but also the way exposition functions in the game.

We don’t discover on our own that Raptor News is the stronghold of a demon propaganda network (as well as an upside down demon prison) we are told by Vergil.

Indeed, just about every “discovery” in the game is made not by Dante or the player, but by the witch Kat and your Machiavellian brother.

Like A Nephilim Out Of Hell

Now let’s set all that aside. Despite the linearity of its levels and the awkwardness of its story and my intense dislike of New Dante (and each and every miniature cut-scene of his face) I’m having a hell of a good time playing this game.

DmC is actually tons of fun. I know a lot of people have complained that the combat is a step in the wrong direction for the franchise, and maybe that’s true. I’m not nearly a diehard enough (or, let’s face it, talented enough) player to really care.

One of the major complaints in terms of combat is that you can get really good scores just by button-spamming. But I still find that learning moves, figuring out which weapons and combos work on specific enemies, and taking time to approach each fight with a bit of strategy rather than just button-mashing actually pays off quite a bit.

There are certainly some odd difficulty spikes and valleys, but over all what makes this game so enjoyable is the combat. It’s not the best action game out there, but it’s still quite good.

When it comes to games like this, I do think that the fun factor is the most important thing. So however baffled I am by some of Ninja Theory’s reboot decisions, I won’t dock points for combat or fun. The game is at once stunningly gorgeous and hideously ugly, but it’s always entertaining.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s entertaining enough to justify a second play-through. I can’t say that about a lot of games. I’m even half-tempted to get the costume pack so I can have the original “look” of Dante, not that this will save him from himself…but still.

In future installments, I’ll take a closer look at the previous entries in this franchise. I’m actually really excited to go back and play the original Devil May Cry which I haven’t played in years. Back in the glorious days of the PS2, this was one of my favorite action games.

It will also be interesting to see how the upcoming Metal Gear Rising Revengeance game compares. The demo for that game was excellent.

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As a standalone game, I felt it was average. I felt like there was a lot of missed potential. That level where you were inside the news? That could have been really cool, with fights against computer-like demons or something. Instead, you just jump from platform to platform for a minute or two. In fact, there was really not much variety in the enemies at all. And toward the end of the game, the environments started feeling really bland. I don’t know, it just wasn’t that entertaining. I have to disagree; the “fun” factor just wasn’t there for me.

Held up against the series that it’s rebooting, though, it falls completely flat. I hope we’ll see more installments in the style of the originals.

Erik, if you do decide to revisit earlier Devil May Cry (which I suggest you do), the PC port of DMC4 is stunning, optimized and loaded with additional features.

I played DmC at the behest of my room-mate and it left quite a poor taste in my mouth. Admittedly, I’m more a fan of older Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, because all of those titles rewarded players looking to abuse game mechanics to more or less ascend to an unkillable god in-game. You could complete them easily enough without having to learn the intricacies of switch and jump cancelling, but if you invested the time they opened up into magnificent playgrounds where you could accomplish various different combos and style to no end.

The new DmC, while not a bad game on its own merit, is a terrible Devil May Cry. Having enemies that were only effected by a certain weapon would’ve been a death knell to the creativity-inspiring gameplay of the older titles, and it’s a design decision that I can’t get on board with. Beyond that, older titles rated your performance with a much more strict prerequisite, whereas DmC rates you on damage and damage alone. If you didn’t vary your attacks in DMC3/4, you were not going to get SSS.

It is unfortunate though, DmC could easily have been nestled alongside Dante’s Inferno and God of War had Capcom not subjected themselves to the problem of having it stand up in name to older titles. When it does, it makes it look much, much worse than it is.

DmC is its own thing So i wont rank it with the others. But DMC3 was the best in the franchise for me if you rank them by overall aspects of a game.

DMC4 being rushed out and half finished is what drags it down even if it has the best combat in the series. DMC 1 has awesome enviroments but that Resident evil camera and it being the first of the franchise a not as deep combat system.

And the Flawed and ill convinced DMC2. Too many reasons to get into. It has a great combat system but so many other flaws.

I wonder if, instead of a reboot, DmC had been designated as an alternative to the main franchise, sort of like Mega Man and Mega Man X, fans wouldn’t have reacted so negatively to it. Though Mega Man X definitely wasn’t sub-par compared to the original.

Ninja Theory rolled out a patch that was a step in the right direction, but the game is still far too littered with balance problems for me to consider it anywhere near on the level of the previous games. Despite that, it’s still pretty fun to play, although it’s incredibly easy, and the bosses were incredibly disappointing.